HTC Vive Consumer Edition Has Landed, We Unbox Room-scale VR

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The HTC Vive is due to land on people’s doorsteps from April 5th, and our in depth review is on its way then too. In the mean time, here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect to get in the box to help tide you over.

It’s hard to fathom that the HTC Vive, the first flagship virtual reality system to be launched for Valve’s SteamVR platform, was unveiled just 12 short months ago. And yet, on April 5th, Valve’s bid to bring virtual reality to the masses will arrive on people’s doorsteps after pre-orders went live on February 29th.

Road to VR‘s review unit landed earlier in the week, and we thought you’d like a closer look at what you’ll be getting in the box when it arrives. The HTC Vive’s launch price was considerably higher (Vive is $799 versus Rift’s $599 minus taxes and shipping) than the Oculus Rift due to the addition of included motion controllers and two Lighthouse tracking base stations, but seeing the amount of kit you get in the final, sizable consumer package may still surprise you.

The external of the HTC Vive consumer edition box in all its glory. It’s all about blacks with flashes of cyan, with a tastefully spot varnished Vive headset the only visual clue as to what’s in the box. Also note the nice spot varnish detailing on the Cyan inner box. In comparison to the consumer Oculus Rift, there’s no outer sleeve adorned with clues of the contents, it’s altogether a more muted design. (Note: iPhone for scale, please don’t write in to complain you didn’t get one)

Lift the lid and you’re greeted by a large quick start guide, but the kind you’re actually likely to find extremely useful as you embark on your room-scale set up journey. With that removed, the capacious interior reveals the stars of the SteamVR hardware show: 2 Lighthouse laser base stations, 2 wireless SteamVR controllers and the bagged Vive headset and cabling.

The more you dig, the more packages you find to open – it’s a real treasure chest of gear – until eventually you’re left with an impressive array of power adapters, cables, breakout box, headset and brackets looking something like this.

With all the equipment out of the box, lets take a closer look at the consumer Vive headset.

Hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek at the consumer edition Vive, we’ll of course be back with our full review and some other goodies on April 5th. Stay tuned.

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Those Fresnel lenses will reflect a lot of light in dark and high contrast games. Space and horror games will suffer the most. Apparently the situation is slightly worse with cv1.

Justin Raymond

Bringer of doom and gloom. Ah well there are software fixes for that.

Steve Biegun

VR is literally dead now. /s

ninkendo

Some of the most amazing tech to release in our lifetime and the first comment has to be some nitpicking negative BS. Of course it’s not perfect… guess what? nothing is, but this is a huge leap and appears to be doing a lot of things right.

Ryan

I have CV1, and it really is pretty distracting in some cases. Lucky’s Tail? non-issue. VR cinema? makes it unusable.

Raphael

Calm down honey… Oculus and vive are amazing consumer vr but i used fresnel lenses for many years so i know the problems they bring. They’re great for immersion and helping to reduce eye strain but those reflections can be bad and space and horror games will be hardest hit.

Matt R

So looking forward to my Vive arriving on Tuesday. Actually much more than I am looking forward to getting my Rift (whenever that is supposed to turn up)

Zobeid

quote: “. . .until eventually you’re left with an impressive array of power adapters, cables, breakout box, headset and brackets. . .”

Impressive, or intimidating? I’m sure some people are going to look at that and ask themselves: What have I gotten myself into here?

Devlin Darkside

Really? If you know what’s needed in your PC to run this I’m guessing you will know how to plug it in.

Mucker2002

He he,

Zobeid, here’s my spec:

CPU: What’s that?

Card: AMD (Not sure which, I don’t have the box anymore, but it works with Windows 10, I managed to download it without knowing though, but generally happy).

RAM: 2MB is that right/OK?. But it’s really slow I think, Amazon took ages to deliver it.

USB Ports: Lots of those, I know I have at least four, but I’m using one for a light and one to keep my coffee warm. Shall I unplug the mouse or keyboard?

Yes, I know someone will tell me I should have bought a Rift (Three USB 3 ports put me off).

Sam Illingworth

What size screws do the wall mounts take, and how far apart? I’d like to get holes drilled in advance!

Andrew Jakobs

If you look closely, they seem to be the same as regular photogear equipment, and as I remember they said it would use the standard size for stands..

eli jarra

looks like those are standard 1/4 20

Mucker2002

Jesus Christ, how impatient. If you’ve not worked it out try drilling 100 holes in a 10 x10 matrix, each 5mm apart where you want to put the lighthouses. Surely then 2 of holes will fit? Right up until you realise it should be bit higher or a bit lower. What I’m saying is test it first, it’ll take 10 minutes? (or about 3 hours in your case).

Request: Better pictures of the hanging brackets for the Lighthouse trackers– want to decide before Tuesday if I want to buy third party brackets.

Jesse Kindwall

So the idea for this popped into my head late last night while wondering when I’ll see shipping confirmation for my Vive. Thought I’d share it here:

Presence is something…

(I want my, I want my, I want my HTC.)

Now look at them bozos. That’s the way you do it.
You play the VR on the HTC.
That ain’t borin’. That’s the way you do it.
Presence is somethin’ can’t get with TV.
Now that ain’t borin’. That’s the way you do it.
Lemme tell ya, can’t do no harm.
Maybe pull a muscle on your trigger finger.
Maybe pull a muscle on you arm.

I shoulda bought a headset for VR.
I shoulda bought a high-end PC.
Look at that blogger, she got it, painting with a wand in thin air,
I could make somethin’….
And he’s on there, what’s that? Zombie noises?
Unloading on the undead with a full magazine.
Oh that ain’t borin’. That’s the way you do it.
That presence is somethin’… just can’t get with TV.

I just had another look, whats that black patch on the bottom of the breakout box? Is it a sticky or Velcro patch? That would be handy.

Anshel Sag

sticky patch, included.

Sam Illingworth

Awesome :)

Badelhas

Looking forward to read the full review. More eager to get a unit, why do they sell in in my neighbor country (Spain) but not in Portugal?! I truly don’t understand. I know we are a smaller country but we are known for being technology lovers and early adopters…

Johnnathan Inostroza Muñoz

what’s the weight of the full box? i’ll import for chile

veritas

16 pounds (probably including shipping box) I was told by a HTC rep.

Klasodeth

The FedEx tracking info for mine shows a package weight of 20 lbs / 9.07 kgs. I’ve seen plenty of items shipped where the weight was just a shipping estimate and not the actual product weight, so I suspect the weight reported by veritas is the actual product weight. But since they’re actually shipping with a reported weight of 20 lbs / 9.07 kgs, I think you can count on the actual weight being no higher than that.